West African giants Ghana and Nigeria both suffered chastening defeats in Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers on Tuesday, while Algeria fought back from two goals down to avoid a shock loss to Burundi.
Cape Verde, who won legions of admirers with their gutsy exploits at this year’s World Cup, also went down in a surprise loss at home to Rwanda.
But heavyweight contenders Egypt, Morocco and Senegal all won difficult away assignments, and there were home wins for Benin, Comoros, Gabon, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia on a busy day of 17 matches in the preliminaries for the 2027 finals to be co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
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Ghana, one of Africa’s 10 representatives at the World Cup where they reached the last 32, surrendered a 2-0 lead in a stunning 4-2 home defeat by Gambia in Accra.
Nigeria, who were semi-finalists at the last Cup of Nations finals in January, had seven Premier League players in their starting line-up but were comprehensively outplayed as they went down 3-0 in Guinea Bissau, where the margin of defeat might have been even bigger.
